Letters

Letters

Article excerpt

Rumsfeld's leadership has won control, but not progress

Newt Gingrich's paean to Donald Rumsfeld's brilliance in his Dec.
28 Opinion piece, "Rumsfeld critics are off the mark," willfully
ignores the real issue: He praises how well the Army fought in Iraq
but avoids any discussion of Rumsfeld's abysmal failure to plan for
the occupation, even though that's the reason he's under such
criticism.

If this had been a Pearl Harbor or an unexpected development in
the middle of an ongoing war, that would have been understandable,
but this war took place at the time and place the Bush
administration chose. There was no reason not to have the occupation
planned out beforehand.

Rumsfeld has accomplished much, but the ultimate test for
military leadership is what happens in the field. By that standard,
he's failed.Fraser Sherman Fort Walton Beach, Fla.

Rumsfeld was an early, forceful advocate for attacking Iraq.
Military operations have defeated Saddam Hussein's army, but have
done little, if anything, to defeat terrorism. They have fueled it.

We won't make real progress in the war on terrorism until we
alter the conditions which cause it to begin with: pervasive
unemployment among the young, education dominated by extreme
madrassahs, and our own failure to deal with the Palestinian
problem. Our nation is woefully ill-prepared to address the
religious and cultural issues that underlie this dynamic.

Rumsfeld has "won" the Beltway war for policy dominance over the
CIA and State Department. Unless we view the war from more points
than his desk at the Pentagon, his win will have been a Pyrrhic
victory.Lt. Col. Jim Anderson (USA, Ret.) University Place, Wash.

The buck stops in Latin America

Regarding L. Ronald Scheman's Dec. 29 Opinion piece, "Reform US
neighborhood bully image": Argentines were fully aware of how their
nation arrived at such a state of financial affairs. Granting
Argentina even more money would have been a temporary solution at
best that would have led to even higher foreign-debt ratios. …